Europe

Materials from Europe

Second Fiddle

The author of Heart of a Shepherd offers another sensitive portrayal of military families, this time stationed abroad, in the city of Berlin at that historic time just after the Wall came down.When 13-year-old Jody and her friends save a badly beaten Russian soldier from drowning, they put into motion a chain of events that will take them from Berlin to Paris and straight into danger. Jody must quickly learn to trust herself, because in the time directly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the border between friend and enemy is not as clear as it once was.Award-winning author of Heart of a Shepherd Rosanne Parry offers a fast-paced, coming-of-age story filled with adventure, music, friendship, and intrigue.

Ask Amy Green: Summer Secrets

Amy is trapped in family vacation hell, until she and Clover, her teenage aunt, get a chance to interview a hot U.S. movie star with a secret. Thirteen-year-old Amy’s dreamy boyfriend, Seth, is off to Rome, while she gets to spend two weeks on a tiny Irish island with a nagging mom and a neurotic aunt locked in a feud, not to mention a crazy stepdad and a surly cousin. Good thing Clover, teen advice columnist supreme, is there to keep Amy from going completely nuts! It doesn’t help Amy’s changeable mood that Seth keeps mentioning some girl in his e-mails, or that Amy feels an electric attraction to the mysterious young gardener next door. So when The Goss magazine unexpectedly sends Clover to glitzy Miami to write a revealing piece on a hot young actor (with Amy as her sidekick, of course) it couldn’t come at a better time.

Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto

This is the only biography for children about the remarkable Holocaust heroine Irena Sendler, who smuggled over 400 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Terezin

Through inmates’ own voices and artwork, Terezin explores the lives of Jewish people in one of the most infamous of the Nazi transit camps. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany turned the small town of Terezin, Czechoslovakia, into a ghetto, and then into a transit camp for thousands of Jewish people. It was a “show” camp, where inmates were forced to use their artistic talents to fool the world about the truth of gas chambers and horrific living conditions for imprisoned Jews. Here is their story, told through the firsthand accounts of those who were there. In this accessible, meticulously researched book, Ruth Thomson allows the inmates to speak for themselves through secret diary entries, artwork, and excerpts from memoirs and recordings narrated after the war. Terezin: Voices from the Holocaust is a moving portrait that shows the strength of the human will to endure, to create, and to survive.

Nora’s Roses

Poor Nora! She has stayed inside all week with a cold, and only Kiki the dog, Teddy the bear, and Maggie the doll for company, while the roses bloom just outside her window. One by one, visitors pass, each stopping to pick a rose on his way, and soon there won’t be any roses left! But with a little imagination, Nora discovers just the right way to cure her sick-in-bed boredom and make her roses last forever.

The Way Back Home

Stranded on the moon after his extraordinary airplane takes him into outer space, a boy meets a marooned young Martian with a broken spacecraft, and the two new friends work together to return to their respective homes.

How to Catch a Star

Eager to have a star of his own, a boy devises imaginative ways of catching one.

Fickle Barbara

Ballerina Bear Barbara, who lives in a child’s room in Paris, discovers that while it is nice to make new friends, old friends should never be forgotten.